Aegate: PA supported the delivery of a leading pharmaceutical authentication company

PA's Steve Carden talks about the Aegate Patient safety network

Aegate was established in 2004 to build a drug authentication technology that could be deployed to raise the barrier against counterfeit medicines reaching patients and stem the economic gains to be made from the trade in illicit pharmaceutical products - currently estimated at $200 billion year.

Today, Aegate is a specialist medicines authentication company, operating within Europe in line with new European legislation that requires every supplied pack of prescription medicines to be authenticated before dispensing. With the specialist software installed in pharmacy systems connected to a highly secure database, pharmacists can validate the quality status of medicines in real-time before handing them to a patient.

At Aegate’s inception, PA Consulting Group provided the entire programme office as well as specialist delivery capability supporting: technology development projects; system architecture; development and protection of the intellectual property; and delivery of test systems including national and international pilots.

To support Aegate's vision, we drew from a team of experts across the business transformation, IT development and technology development parts of the business, and enabled Aegate to move rapidly through the start-up phases of a venture company. With our support, Aegate was able to move from pilot to full commercial launch in under a year, with an initial successful Aegate rollout in Belgium in 2006.

Aegate has since launched its services in a further three European countries, integrating the software in a quarter of Europe’s pharmacies. The system itself has demonstrated clear benefits to patient safety. In 2010 alone, it provided pharmacists with rapid notification before the dispensing of more than 48,000 individual packs that were recalled and 3,000 packs that were expired. The authorities were also notified of two incidents of potentially suspicious packs which were placed under investigation.

PA’s thorough approach to technology development and testing gave Aegate enormous confidence that the technology platform underpinning their entire business was not just functional, but also secure and robust. This is of critical importance when managing and processing highly secure information. These aspects were subsequently validated in 2008 with an independent audit of the delivered system by the University of Leuven that found the system to be 100% robust and reliable using a statistically significant sample size.

Aegate is now firmly established as an important tool in the pharmaceutical industry’s fight against illicit trade.

Brexit: the eye of the stormThe UK life sciences sector will undoubtedly be affected by the Brexit after the decision that Article 50 will be triggered by the end of March 2017; and it needs to start preparing now for the uncertainties ahead.